12 months on - a project revisited

It was 12 months ago that this crazy sewing adventure started for me.  And it all started because of a coat.

I had seen a lady at a vintage fair wearing a beautiful princess seamed full skirted coat, and I wanted one.  And vintage being what it is, I couldn't find one in my size, the colour I wanted, or for a price I could afford.  I had a lightbulb moment when I realised I could borrow my mum's sewing machine and sew one from a vintage pattern!

 The pattern that started it all - isn't it beautiful!  Such an elegant coat.

So I bought a pattern, some fabric and started sewing (and blogging) and I haven't looked back.  Not once.  Not only have I loved every second of it, its been a real turning point in my life.  And twelve months on I've decided to make another coat, and this time do it better!

These are the fabrics I purchased - and I'm really excited about them!

I purchased this gorgeous Japanese wool flannel from Gorgeous Fabrics

I originally purchased the swirly black lining recommended by Gorgeous Fabrics, but decided I wanted to be more daring, and instead found this suitably amazing red polka dot satin... its scrumptious!

There are quite a few pattern pieces to cut out, and they are quite large, so I didn't get much further than the cutting out stage on the weekend I'm afraid...  But me being me, I wasn't content to just follow the pattern as is - no, that would be easy!

Hahaha - so true!

Instead I've decided to make the skirt of the coat a bit fuller, and the collar a little bigger.

 

You can see here that I added roughly an inch to each side of the eight skirt pieces

Last time with this coat, since I was VERY new to sewing, I had no idea what bound buttonholes were.  However I do now, and I know that they are a beautiful finishing detail on any garment.  I say finishing detail, but funnily enough they are one of the first things you have to tackle.  I haven't tried them before, but this coat deserves them, so I'm going to give them a go.

So yesterday I went looking for candidates in the world's most amazing button shop!  They don't have an online store (which, when you see the amount of stock they have, you can understand) so it was very lucky that I happened to be nearby.

Here are the three I chose:

Here is the difficult thing - I love them all, so I was hoping for some input from you guys.

CANDIDATE 1 - the Round Button.  Boring and predictable, but goes with everything.
CANDIDATE 2 - the Heart Button.  Cutesy and fun, and not too over the top.
CANDIDATE 3 - the Red Lips Button.  Whimsical and fun and a bit crazy.

So, who would like to put forward a suggestion on which buttons I should use... someone... please!!!

Beccie
xxx

The black coat has its first outing!

On the weekend Mum and I went to Wahroonga to the Rose Siedler House 50s Fair! It was a great day out and we were very lucky with the weather. It looked like it was going to rain all day but somehow it didn't.

I thought this was the perfect opportunity to debut my black coat (complete with buttons thanks to some last minute efforts!). So I gathered together the bones of an outfit:
- black dress with embroidered blue swallows
- blue petticoat
- blue shoes

But I was missing a few things - like lots of accessories. Thats the thing with dressing vintage - its pretty much all about the accessories. You need to have the works and it all needs to be matchy-matchy.

The day before Mum and I wandered around Newtown looking at all the vintage and collectible shops and I found a powder blue single strand necklace which I could wrap around my neck twice - so I bought that. Then when we arrived at the fair, I found a matching pair of powder blue clip-on earrings so I bought them! THEN I found a pair of powder blue gloves, and a powder blue leather handbag! Now I had an outfit!!

So what did I do - I entered the best dressed competition!

This is a photo of my walking down the ramp from the beautiful 1950s house onto the red carpet. I was convinced I was going to fall flat on my face... a steep ramp, thats damp, in sky high stilletos. What was I thinking!!

There were 30 women in the competition, several hundred people watching, and what felt like a million photographers. I didnt win, but it was a great experience and I met some great people :)

AND I got so so so many compliments about my coat!!! Everybody wanted to know where I got it from, and then when I said I'd made it people wanted me to make them one! And I even found a photo of me on Facebook taken by a random person, with another random person commenting that I had made the coat myself!!!

I was very flattered by all the attention the coat got, and I'm looking forward to wearing more of my creations when the weather warms up. Speaking of which, I finished the pattern adjustments for the wrap dress and now I just have to cut it out and get sewing! Hopefully I will have time soon :)

The Trouble with Buttons

Buttons - I love them but they can cause problems. Take these ones that I have pinned onto my coat for instance.

I purchased these vintage buttons on Etsy from LakeViewArts and they are beautiful and just what I wanted BUT they are too big for my automatic button holer on my sewing machine.

(By the way, these buttons aren't bronze like they look in these photos - they are actually black and very very shiny. And the fabric is much more black, and less grey...).

What to do now???

As far as I can see it there are two options:

1. I do the buttonholes by hand. This involves lots of finicky hand sewing and the end result will be a buttonhole that (more than likely) will look crap; or

2. I use the machine to do the stiches like the automatic function. This is harder than it sounds. I had several trial runs at it the other night and none of them turned out satisfactorily. Sigh!

It seems I should have done a bound buttonhole back when I started making the coat. I've never heard of bound buttonholes before until I found this tutorial today from Sewaholic. The end result looks very nice and finished, see:

But alas its too late now. You know it probably said something about bound buttonholes in the sewing instructions, but to be honest I didn't read them much because they weren't that much help... I kinda just made it up as I went along.

Any-hoo!

There is one way to solve this conundrum and thats to get more buttons - smaller ones - that can fit in the automatic buttonholer thingy on the sewing machine... I am yet to make up my mind on this. I think I need to do some more experimenting before I make a decision.

My First Sewing Effort

So here are a couple of photos of the coat that I sewed - my first effort at sewing from a vintage pattern. And not only that but it was my first attempt at adjusting a pattern to fit me! I'm pretty happy with the way it turned out.

I made it from curtain material believe it or not (not the rubber backed stuff) and put in a 5mm think felt lining in the bodice to help keep me warm. The whole thing is then lined in lovely sky blue satin.

I have yet to put the buttons on though... the vintage buttons I bought on etsy are too big to fit in the automatic buttonhole foot on my sewing machine. This means that I have to work out how to do them manually with the sewing machine or do them by hand (yuck - don't like hand sewing!)